JELANI COBB: I’m just going to ask you straight up. Is it possible to make the communities that we’re talking about safe while respecting people’s constitutional rights?

Det. WILBERTO RUIZ:Absolutely. Absolutely. Without a doubt. We go out there every night.

JELANI COBB:But the DoJ doesn’t feel like that’s what’s happened here.

Det. WILBERTO RUIZ:That’s an opinion. I mean, we go out there. It’s not any disrespect to anybody out there. It’s not about race, you know, or violating their rights. It has nothing to do with that. We have a job to do. We live in this city. We care about this city. This is what we do.

JELANI COBB:I have to tell you something, though, right? So I grew up in Queens, right, and on—my first experience with the police was that I was thrown up against a mailbox just like this one. I was coming home from a baseball game, had my uniform on, was carrying a bat and a glove. The guy said it was a crime that was committed, and so on, and I was kind of, like, “I’m coming from a game.”

The next experience I had was a few years later. I was walking with a group of friends of mine, and a cop pulled a gun on us and told us to get on the sidewalk.

Det. WILBERTO RUIZ:He pulled out his weapon to make you comply with whatever he needed you to do at the time, for his safety and other officers’ safety, even for your own safety.

Det. RICARDO REILLO:You could point your weapon at somebody and give them commands to comply. Once you feel like the threat’s neutralized, like, you know, they’re complying with you, then you put your weapon away, and you know—

Det. WILBERTO RUIZ:Have a normal interaction.

Det. RICARDO REILLO:Yeah, have a normal interaction.

JELANI COBB:But can you really have a normal interaction if someone’s pointed a gun at you? I don’t—I don’t—

Det. RICARDO REILLO:You got to look at it our way. I mean, they say there was five to six males and one of them possibly has a weapon. What would you do as a police officer if you encounter a group of males, one supposedly has a weapon on him? How would you confront the situation?

JELANI COBB:I’m not sure. But that’s why I asked the question about can you do this—can this be done in a way that still respects people’s rights? I think that’s the question that everybody is wondering about policing.

Det. WILBERTO RUIZ:Listen, we try to go out there and respect everybody’s rights.

Det. RICARDO REILLO:Exactly.

Det. WILBERTO RUIZ:We’re not out here saying, “Hey, we’re going to violate this person’s rights.” That’s not what we’re here for. I tell you, our main objective is to go home at the end of the night. We have families. We have children. We have wives. We have girlfriends. We have sisters. We have mothers. We have fathers.